PENICILLIUM SPICULISPORUM, A NEW 

 ASCOGENOUS FUNGUS 



S. G. Lehman 

 (With Plate 19) 



The organism herein described first appeared in cultures front 

 rootlets of apparently healthy cotton plants taken from a field in 

 Anson County, N. C. In making the original cultures short 

 pieces of rootlets were first washed, then treated with 50 per cent, 

 solution of alcohol, rinsed in sterile water and placed into tubes 

 of steamed rice. Some three or four weeks later the original 

 cultures were observed to contain a fungus which had formed 

 great numbers of perithecia of the type belonging to the Asper- 

 gillaceae. When ascospores from these perithecia were planted 

 in potato glucose agar in petri dishes, white spreading colonies 

 developed producing, first, a sparse crop of penicillate conidial 

 fructifications and later, perithecia identical with those in the 

 original cultures. The structure of the condial fructifications- 

 places this fungus definitely in the genus Penicillium, and a 

 comparison of its morphological and cultural characters with 

 those of other species of this genus as given in descriptions pub- 

 lished by Saccardo (1), Lafar (2), Engler and Prantl (3), Thorrr 

 (4), Sopp (5), Sartory (6) and Sartory and Bainier (7-10) 

 shows it to differ from any of these in one or more important 

 features. It is, therefore, described as a new species and since 

 the walls of the ascopores bear minute spines, it is designated 

 Penicillium spiculisporum. 



Work with this fungus has shown that perithecia are produced 

 in abundance on a wide variety of media without special cultural 

 methods, a character rendering improbable the assumption that 

 anyone could have cultivated this fungus without having ob- 

 served them. This habit of abundant and continued perithecial 

 formation coupled with sparse conidial production, a character 

 not at all usual to species "of Penicillium, is possessed in common 



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